This weekend saw the AMSAT-UK Colloquium take place and Jim G3WGM and Ciaran M0XTD together gave a presentation on the FUNcube-1 mission.

The presentation included the announcement of a new version of the FUNcube-1 Dashboard. This has greatly improved decoding performance for weak signals - especially for Dongle users. Additionally the Dashboard can now activate the Bias-T preamp power from the Dongle.

I restarted the dashboard with the new version this morning, there were 4 passes and I decoded 411 packets, very few errors. The last pass was 6 degrees an d I got almost all the data while in range. The first pass, at 09:18-09:21 was only 1 degree but again I got almost all the data - so its very effective and what has been wrong up to now?

Seems to be improved. On a 51 degree East pass this morning I logged 71 frames. That exceeded my previous best by about 15 frames.

Using an M2 eggbeater with SSB SP-2000 preamp in front of a FCD++.

Still a few more things that ought to be saved for the next run. Window positions and sizes for one. Source selection still needs to be made each time. I would think that dashboard should come up exactly as it was set up as in the previous usage. Also, the audio out is not scalable and is very high making necessary external level setting each time.

The red curtain positions are now saved but the green rx indicator comes up outside and is hard to get it pulled back in.

At the Central States VHF Conference in Austin over the weekend, several AMSAT-NA guys said they have been impressed by the complete job on the Funcube.

Thanks for your kind comments!@ Richard...we spotted the curtain error in 847 quite quickly...if you go back to the download page you now will find an even newer 848 version which at least fixes that. Usual excuse - nice software man going off on extended holiday... he rushes to get it finished before he leaves the UK...we rush to get it out and then....sorry!